Exemplary embodiments relate generally to networks, and more particularly, to methods, systems and computer program products for providing network outage information.
Network providers strive to provide high levels of network reliability and quality of service to their customers. During system failure situations, such as those encountered during storms, workers in the field and others are aided in performing network verification and recovery by utilizing related outage information. Storm related outage information, for example, may include information such as remote terminal/digital loop carrier (RT/DLC) system failures, digital loop carriers (DLCs) without commercial power, failed asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) equipment, broadband customer out of service (OOS), simplex and failed carrier systems, signaling system seven (SS7) links affected, and central offices (COs) on emergency generator or battery power. Some of this information is required by the network provider in order to advise the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) of the amount of damage to the network provider property and to inform the FCC of the effects on customer service.
Typically, storm related outage information for a network is gathered using a variety of automated and non-automated methods. In the past, alarm data was printed and examined line-by-line by numerous individuals to determine equipment status. A summary was created and faxed or emailed to field workers. This process was primarily manual and time consuming. For a large network provider, the fax could become over seventy-five pages in length. In addition, the individuals examining the alarm data were not always using the same criteria and therefore, inconsistencies would occur in the reporting of equipment status.
Today, determining equipment status has been automated in some respects. For example, commercial software packages such as the Telcordia NMA System, provides monitoring and analysis of problems on various types of networks. In addition, network providers may have one or more internally developed software applications providing other types of reporting data related to system alarms and outages. Currently, this may require employees of the network provider to look at two or more sources of data and/or to manually enter the data for consolidation into a single report for the field employees performing the trouble shooting and repair. It would be desirable to have an automated system that collects data from a variety of monitoring and analysis software systems to provide a consolidated report. In addition, it would be desirable to have access to both summary and detailed alarm data in order to track system outage information.